


sleep, interrupted.

by leah k (blinkiesays)



Category: Doom (2005)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-01
Updated: 2008-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-02 02:40:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/364088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blinkiesays/pseuds/leah%20k
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John closes his eyes for what feels like hours, but is probably only thirty seconds, and when he opens them again, Sarge is sitting at the foot of his bunk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sleep, interrupted.

**Author's Note:**

> December 2008
> 
> Written for Ceria in the 2008 [Yuletide](http://yuletidetreasure.org/) Fic Exchange

It's two in the fucking morning and Duke will not shut up. You'd think that after four fucking days of trudging through a swamp full of ugly motherfuckers hell bent on killing you - you'd think that as soon as you got out of that kind of situation, any man would fall right to sleep the moment he was horizontal. At least, that had been the plan in John's mind.

Not Duke, though, Duke is still _fucking_ talking.

John is thinking seriously about shooting him. He likes Duke. He'll miss Duke when he's gone. It'll be a crying shame, but John will have time to be really broken up about it _after_ he's gotten a full night's sleep. Which is just not going to happen as long as Duke is still alive.

John's thinking about his sidearm; he's been thinking about it for the last five minutes. John can't quite focus his eyes, but he can make an educated guess where Duke's head is, because that's where all the noise is coming from. The longer he thinks about it, the more it starts to seem like a really good idea.

John closes his eyes for what feels like hours, but is probably only thirty seconds, and when he opens them again, Sarge is sitting at the foot of his bunk, holding John's sidearm. As John watches, Sarge pulls the magazine, empties the chamber and takes the whole thing apart in about seven seconds. He hands it to John in a dozen pieces.

Sarge says, "If you're cleaning your weapon, you can't kill anyone with it." He looks over at Duke, who is still fucking _talking_ , and says, "That's not always a bad thing."

John nods, dumb, catches the oily rag that Sarge throws at him. Sarge pats him on the shoulder, stands up, and says, "Duke, if I hear another word out of your mouth, they will not find your body. Do you hear me?"

Duke shuts up.

* * *

Four months later, cleaning his weapons when he gets the urge to kill a teammate has become something of a habit. Duke asked him, once, "Man, why are you always always oiling that thing?" John decided it was better not to tell him.

Ever since the new guy, Portman, joined up, John has started cleaning other people's pieces, if they let him. He's almost done with Duke's when Sarge walks in from the com room and says, "There's a situation." John looks up from where he's checking the barrel. 

The situation turns out to be a psychotic warlord holding about three hundred people hostage in an abandoned Bolivian gold mine.

For a number of perfectly fucking valid reasons, John doesn't like tunnels. It's not something that he talks about, and it's not the kind of thing that comes up in the conversations he has with the rest of his squad. You don't answer questions like, "Did you see the ass on that one?" with, "I still have nightmares about my parents' death."

Sarge says, "Move out, men," and John continues not to say anything, even as it becomes more and more apparent that they have to go into the mine shaft and less and less clear when they're going to be able to come back _out_.

Twenty-seven tense, grinding hours of negotiations and fifteen minutes of deafening confusion and bloodshed later, the bad guys are dead, the good guys are still alive, and the whole squad is ordered to sit tight and wait for further instructions. Sarge tells them all to get some sleep while they can and John hunkers down against a steel support strut, tries not to think words like _structural integrity_ or _cave-in_ or _collapse_ , and closes his eyes.

He wakes up screaming.

When John realizes what the fuck is happening, every gun in the squad is trained on him and the guys are looking at him like he's gone completely fucking batshit. Duke says, "Jesus Christ, Reaper, what the fuck is wrong with you?"

John tries to say something, but it comes out like a croak, his voice is all scratchy and screwed up.

Once everyone has realized that he's not going to snap and try to take the rest of the squad out, the guns go back in their holsters and Duke says, "Man, I didn't even know you could make that kind of noise," and slaps him on his back. No big deal.

Everyone else goes right back to sleep, god bless Marine training, except every time John closes his eyes, he can see flashes of the dream, dust and blood mixing together into a dark red clay on the ground. Eventually, Sarge comes by, kicks his foot and says, "I'm going to secure the perimeter," like it's an invitation. John follows.

They walk in silence for a while, conspicuously not talking about the way John just lost his shit in there, until Sarge says, out of the blue, "You talk in your sleep, sometimes." This is news to John. "You talk to someone named Sam, a lot." Sarge looks at him, sideways, and if he was the kind of guy who insinuated things, well, John can guess what he'd assume about _that_.

"It's not what you're thinking," John says, "I have a sister named Samantha." John would say that Sarge, if he was the kind of guy who had facial expressions, almost looks disappointed. John thinks about leaving their little talk at that, case closed, except he hasn't talked about it in so long that words start coming out before he makes a conscious decision to say them. By the time they've walked the whole perimeter, John has told Sarge his whole god damned life story. Stuff nobody else knows. Sarge, at least, does him the favor of not making eye contact, and pretending like he doesn't see John's hands shaking.

Once they get within sight of the others, Sarge suddenly stops, turns to John, catches his eye, and nods. Then he starts walking again, making noise loud enough to wake the dead, and yells, "Up and at 'em ladies, we're moving out of this hell hole."

* * *

After the thing with the tunnels, Sarge stops calling him Reaper all the time and starts calling him John when they're not in combat situations. It's a small thing, no one else even notices, but John knows something's changed.

Every once in a while, he's struck by that conversation, _you talk to someone named Sam_ , that phantom look of disappointment. It's not like he's dwelling on it or anything, though, being on an elite tactical squad means he doesn't get a lot of time for self-reflection.

Nothing happens and nothing happens and then they get thrown into a ugly firefight with a fucking _battalion_ of drug-runners hopped up on god knows what and they lose half the squad in one night. When they get back to the barracks, Sarge just walks into the com room and shuts the door without speaking to anyone, and John knows he's writing letters to families. 

John and Duke and Portman sit on their bunks, staring at the walls, their hands, doing anything but looking at each other. Duke and Portman go to bed, eventually. John closes his eyes, but he can't stop thinking about the tense line of Sarge's shoulders, the quiet way he'd closed the door to the com room, how it's five hours later, and he hasn't come out yet.

John gets up and tries the door. It isn't locked.

Sarge is hunched in front of the computer, staring at a mostly blank page. John can read, over his shoulder, _Dear Mrs. Reese, your daughter Jennifer_ , and then nothing. Everyone had liked Giant. She'd been engaged.

There are three other letters on USMC stationary scattered over the desk, Sarge's signature at the bottom, under, _With deepest condolences_.

John closes the door behind him, walks a couple more steps into the room, and touches Sarge on the shoulder. Sarge flinches, hits the power button on the monitor. He doesn't say, "What do you want?" and John's grateful because he's not sure he knows either. He doesn't move his hand off Sarge's shoulder, though, and eventually Sarge relaxes.

John doesn't know how to say, "You help me when I can't sleep," doesn't know what it would mean if he had the words to express to Sarge what he's actually thinking. Instead, he turns Sarge's chair around, leans in, and when Sarge doesn't push him away, kisses him. It's not graceful, not even particularly sexy, but John hopes it conveys what he wants it to: _you're there for me, let me be here for you_. Sarge kisses back, taking John up on his offer, and John takes him to bed, to sleep.


End file.
